Notes to Volume 2: October 1956 to December 1957 |
GWL | 24 October 1956 | |
the old Duke of Devonshire, who yawned | The 8th Duke of Devonshire's yawn in the middle of his own maiden speech impressed Disraeli, who commented, 'He'll do. To anyone who can betray such languor in such circumstances the highest posts should be open.' (Duchess of Devonshire, The House — A Portrait of Chatsworth, 1987, p 43.) | |
Conrad, Youth | An autobiographical short story written in 1898 and included as the first story in Conrad's 1902 volume Youth, a Narrative, and Two Other Stories: | |
Crawfie literature | The Little Princesses, 1950, the memoirs of Marion Crawford, breaking the confidentiality of her former post as governess to Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, were followed by a popular ghosted column in Woman's Own magazine. | |
'Pecunia non olet' | The Emperor Vespasian reintroduced a urine tax on public lavatories within Rome's great sewer system the Cloaca Maxima. When his son Titus criticised him, he supposedly pointed out that a coin did not smell ('Pecunia non olet'). (Suetonius, The Life of Vespasian 23.) In modern Italian, urinals are sometimes known as 'vespasiani'. | |
RH-D | 27 October 1956 | |
Silas Wegg | From Dickens's Our Mutual Friend, Ch 5. | |
'of repellent aspect, remotely connected with education' | Lady Bracknell's description of Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 3. | |
The Good Woman of Setzuan | Bertolt Brecht's Der gute Mensch von Sezuan, is now more usually translated as The Good Person of Setzuan. First produced, 1943. The cast of George Devine's 1956 production included Joan Plowright, John Osborne and Robert Stephens. | |
GWL | 1 November 1956 | |
a 'monstrous little voice' | Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1:2: 'let me play Thisby too, I'll speak in a monstrous little voice.' | |
'solitude of shepherds…' | From 'Once in the wind of morning' subtitled 'The Merry Guide' (A Shropshire Lad, 1896, XLII). | |
'No, I read no poetry now…' | Quoted by A C Benson in his introduction to An Eton Poetry Book (1925) | |
All passes. Art alone… | From Ars Vitrix, Dobson's English version of Théophile Gautier's L'Art. | |
Bromsgrove | Public school, founded 1553. Housman was a pupil there from 1870-77. | |
'about stone-time' | 'Hell Fire' from Butler's Note-Book: | |
Miss Savage | Eliza Mary Ann Savage, Butler's friend, confidante and correspondent from 1871 until her death in 1885. | |
RH-D | 4 November 1956 | |
Daily Telegraph | Daily newspaper, established 1855. Originally Liberal in outlook, in the twentieth century it became a byword for right-wing views. | |
translated or cribbed? | Ars Victrix is not a straightforward translation; Dobson, as RH-D notes, called it 'Imitated from Théophile Gautier', and it consists of 40 lines to Gautier's 56, which begin: | |
a good thirty-five years younger | In fact 29 years younger | |
…much the shortest | The aggregated playing time of the four acts of La bohème is less than two hours, although the King would have seen the piece at Covent Garden, with prolonged intervals extending the evening considerably. | |
GWL | 8 November 1956 | |
'What is known not always present' | From the preface to Johnson's Dictionary: | |
Dorian Gray | In Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which the main character, begins as 'a young man of extraordinary personal beauty' and dies as 'withered, wrinkled and loathsome of visage'. | |
so loathsome a father | The 9th Marquess of Queensberry. | |
Dotheboys | William Shaw, headmaster of Bowes Academy in Greta Bridge, often held to be the model for Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby. Shaw was sued in 1823 for negligence when two children went blind while in his care at Bowes Academy and he had to pay £600 in damages. There are many similarities between Shaw and Squeers: both had only one eye; both had cards stating that their school was near Greta Bridge and would teach young gentlemen Latin, English, arithmetic, geography and geometry, and…board and lodge them for twenty guineas. | |
'Natur' she's a rum 'un' | Nicholas Nickleby, Ch 45: 'It only shows what Natur is, sir,' said Mr Squeers. 'She's a rum 'un, is Natur.' | |
That inimitable page of W. Cory's | Quoted at length in GWL's letter of 29 November. | |
RH-D | 11 November 1956 | |
Priestley…Leavis | 'Thoughts on Dr Leavis', The New Statesman, 10 November. The piece was reprinted in Priestley's Thoughts in the Wilderness (1957). Priestley considered Leavis 'a sort of Calvinist' who 'makes one feel that he hates books and authors' in his 'firework displays of neurotic egoism' (pp 205, 206 and 208). Reviewing Priestley's book in The Saturday Review, Ben Ray Redman described Leavis as 'most humorless and pompous of living literary editors.' | |
an Agatha Christie play | If it was in the West End, either The Mousetrap at the Ambassadors or Towards Zero at the St James's. | |
the film of Moby Dick | 1956 film based on Melville's novel, directed by John Huston and starring Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab. | |
GWL | 15 November 1956 | |
'smooth-sliding Mincius' | Milton, Lycidas, lines 86/87: | |
RH-D | 18 November 1956 | |
unforgiving minute | Kipling's poem 'If': | |
his brother's funeral | Maurice Headlam had died on 2 November aged 83 | |
'The bloom is gone and with the bloom go I' | From Matthew Arnold's 'Thyrsis': So I have heard the cuckoo's parting cry | |
GWL | 22 November 1956 | |
'with his belly standing astrote like a taber, and his null totty with drink' | More, De quatuor novissimis: 'What good can the great glutton do with his belly standing a strout like a tabour and his noll totty with drink, but balk up his brewes in the midst of his matters, or lie down and sleep like a swine?' | |
I am no clearer…than Mr Micawber was about gowans | Dickens, David Copperfield, Ch 28: | |
'then they will molest you rarely' | Letter from Johnson to Boswell, 8 April 1780. | |
Junior Ganymede, of which Jeeves was a member | Club for valets and butlers in Curzon Street, W1. The club's rules require members to contribute to the club book candid information about the people they have worked for, so that fellow members can be better informed about prospective employers. The contents of the book are supposed to be strictly confidential to club members, though Jeeves stretches a point in the last chapter of The Code of the Woosters. | |
RH-D | 25 November 1956 | |
All occasions do inform against us | Hamlet 4:4 | |
Time and Tide | Literary and political magazine founded in 1920 by Lady Rhondda. Ceased publication in 1977. | |
'We work in the dark…' | Henry James, The Middle Years (1893). | |
Duff Cooper Memorial Prize | Instituted in 1956 in Duff Cooper's memory. Awarded annually for the best work of history, biography, or political science published in English or French. | |
Alan Moorehead's Gallipoli | Published by Hamish Hamilton in 1956. The book also won the Sunday Times literary prize and gold medal for 1955/56. | |
GWL | 29 November 1956 | |
Floreat Etona amicabilis concordia | King's has formal ties with Eton, Winchester, and New College, Oxford, dating back to 1444, a four-way relationship known as the Amicabilis Concordia. | |
W. Cory on public school education—the last word, me judice | From Cory's 1861 tract Eton Reform. | |
RH-D | 2 December 1956 | |
the P.M.'s last fortnight at Goldeneye | Anthony Eden was convalescing at Ian Fleming's house in Jamaica. | |
Annals of the Parish | 1821 volume of stories by John Galt, telling of life in the Ayrshire town of Dalmailing during the period of the Industrial Revolution. | |
'I am a willow... | Both are from poems by Emerson: 'Musquetaquid' and 'Terminus'. | |
Do you remember Old English? | Galsworthy's 1924 dramatisation of his 1916 short story 'A Stoic.' In both play and story the crux of the plot is an old man's calculated suicide by eating a rich and elaborate dinner, with many courses and as many wines, against his doctor's orders. | |
GWL | 5 December 1956 | |
Ike | Dwight Eisenhower, president of the USA from 1953 to 1961 | |
'we are for the dark' | Antony and Cleopatra, 5:2 | |
I wonder how true it is that Lloyd Osbourne wrote practically all of it | Osbourne conceived the story and wrote the first draft. Stevenson wrote in April 1888 to Miss Ferrier ('Coggie'), that Osbourne 'wrote a tale this winter, which appeared to me so funny I have taken it in hand.' | |
the Athenaeum | Literary and scientific periodical, published between 1828 and 1923. | |
Tennyson's Queen Mary | 1875 drama, in five acts and twenty-three scenes, depicting Mary Tudor, Phillip II and Princess Elizabeth. The Times gave a favourable review, but the play has not entered the regular repertory. | |
Christie Johnstone was immensely superior to Vanity Fair | Novels by Charles Reade (1855) and Thackeray (1848). | |
Landor's remark hits the nail firmly: 'We admire by tradition (or fashion) and criticise by caprice.' | 'Tradition', not 'fashion'. Quoted by Augustine Birrell in 'A Good Book and a Bad One' in Selected Essays 1884-1907. | |
Germane soup | Potage purée St Germain. Cream soup of pea and lettuce. | |
cutlet soubees | Côtelettes de mouton à la Soubise. Cutlets of lamb or mutton with a creamed onion sauce. Popular among Victorian diners. | |
cheese remmykin | (or ramekin) a variant of soufflé, served as a savoury at the end of dinner. | |
This from memory; I don't think it is inaccurate. | It is accurate in every particular. | |
'bortsch' | Beetroot soup; the most usual English spelling is 'borscht'. | |
King's Founder's Feast | Annual dinner in memory of Henry VI, founder of the college. | |
one with Nineveh and Tyre | Kipling, 'Recessional': | |
Roger's windfall from the Evening Standard for his Suffragette book | In 1956 Roger Fulford won the £5000 Evening Standard book prize for his study of the Suffragette struggle before 1914. Votes for Women: The Story of a Struggle was published in hardback in 1957 by Faber & Faber. | |
a mere Rahab | A harlot. Joshua 2:1: 'And they went, and came into the house of a harlot whose name was Rahab, and lay there.' | |
Basil Willey's More Nineteenth Century Studies | More Nineteenth Century Studies: A Group of Honest Doubters. As well as Newman, Willey considered Tennyson, J A Froude, Mark Rutherford and John Morley. | |
that delightful passage, in Vale I think | Moore's three volumes of autobiography were Ave, Salve and Vale, known collectively as Hail and Farewell. Moore's critique of Newman was in fact in Salve. He set out to debunk Newman's Apologia pro Vita sua for its poor prose, which Moore contended, revealed equally poor thinking. | |
his brother the colonel | Colonel Maurice Moore, whom Moore portrays in the passage as representative of the unbiased reader. | |
Kingsley had the better of the argument | The ODNB observes that Newman 'scored easy debating points' against Kingsley, 'whose reputation suffered accordingly, but commentators at the time and subsequently disagreed about the merits of the case.' | |
felix opportunitate mortis | Tacitus, Agricola 45: 'Tu vero felix, Agricola, non vitae tantum claritate, sed etiam opportunitate mortis.' A sentiment frequently expressed by Latin writers: 'lucky in the timing of your death'—dying before the encroachment of age, tribulation or disgrace. | |
RH-D | 9 December 1956 | |
Diana Cooper's memoirs | RH-D published three volumes of Diana Cooper's memoirs: The Rainbow Comes and Goes (1958), The Light of Common Day (1959) and Trumpets from the Steep (1960). All the titles are taken from Wordsworth's 'Ode on Intimations of Immortality'. | |
My ardours for surprize now lost | The original reads "My ardours for 'emprize ....' The OED defines the word as 'An undertaking, an enterprise; esp. one of a bold, adventurous, or chivalrous nature'. | |
Noel Annan…his book on Leslie Stephen | Leslie Stephen: the Godless Victorian (1951). | |
GWL | 13 December 1956 | |
his sordid thefts from the British Museum | Wise (1859–1937) bought imperfect quarto texts and stole replacements for the missing or damaged leaves from copies in the British Museum; these thefts were not discovered until the 1950s. | |
Agnes Grey | 1847 novel by Anne Brontë, about a governess—possibly based on Brontë's own experiences. | |
Strachey-Woolf letters | Letters of Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey, edited by Leonard Woolf and James Strachey, 1956. Reviewing the book in the TLS, William Plomer's verdict was similar to GWL's; he described the correspondence as 'disappointing' and remarked on its occasional 'self-consciousness and stiltedness'. (TLS, 7 December 1956, p 721) | |
Here endeth the epistle of George the Apostle | Book of Common Prayer: the Order for Daily Morning or Evening Prayer: 'And the Epistle ended, he shall say, Here endeth the Epistle.' | |
Pluck and Button | Puck and Bottom, according to Shakespeare. | |
the Welsh Board | Several regional examining bodies were entitled to award the General Certificate of Education. Some were generally believed to be more rigorous than others. | |
RH-D | 16 December 1956 | |
Spiced beef ... massaged with a different herb every day | Spiced beef was once a traditional Christmas dish in English country houses. The great food writer Elizabeth David gives a recipe for it that calls for a 10—12 lb joint of silverside rubbed daily with sugar (6 oz), saltpetre (10 oz), salt (6 oz), pepper (2 oz), allspice (10 oz) and juniper berries (2 oz) across 9—14 days, before slow braising for at least 5 hours. A joint of beef on so lavish a scale was a fairly recent luxury in 1956, the wartime and post-war rationing of meat having ended only two years earlier. | |
O.W. | Oscar Wilde. | |
H.I. | Henry Irving. | |
Fleming's proofs | Invasion 1940—An Account of the German Preparations and the British Counter-Measures (1957). | |
The Times | England's oldest national newspaper, founded in 1785 as 'The Daily Universal Register', changed in 1788 to the present title. All other newspapers with 'Times' in their title, from The Times of India to The New York Times, derive their titles from the original. | |
GWL | 20 December 1956 | |
'Counting fish as nothing' | Lamb, The Last Essays of Elia, 'To the Shade of Elliston': | |
How many dishes were there at the Caliph's feast… | From Beckford's Vathek: | |
Clive Bell on his friends | Old Friends, 1956. Bell's reminiscences of the Bloomsbury set: Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, Virginia Woolf (his sister in law), Roger Fry and Vanessa Bell; and also of Cocteau, Derain, Matisse, Poulenc and Satie. | |
Bloomsbury | A set of writers, artists, and intellectuals living in or associated with Bloomsbury in the early 20th century. | |
Housman's terrier and rat | Letter to Seymour Adelman, 6 May 1928: 'I can no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat; but he knows a rat when he comes across one.' | |
bouleversé | Upset. | |
RH-D | 30 December 1956 | |
Beefsteak | Dining club, founded c. 1735 by John Rich and Lord Peterborough, originally called the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks. Reformed several times thereafter. The club currently (2019) meets at 9 Irving Street, off Leicester Square. Members of the original and successor clubs have included Samuel Johnson, George IV when Prince of Wales, Henry Irving, W S Gilbert, Edward Elgar, Harold Macmillan, Osbert Lancaster and Stephen Fry. | |
GWL | 3 January 1957 | |
'shades of the prison house' | Wordsworth, 'Ode—Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood': | |
books selected for their unreadability | The CUP list for December 1956 consisted of: | |
The Dame | Eton term for matron of a house. | |
A novel by Vicki Baum | The Mustard Seed (1953). | |
RH-D | 5 January 1957 | |
The John Carter | Books and Book-Collectors, published by RH-D Ltd in 1956. Essays on great book collectors, typographers, the collecting of detective fiction and the Wise forgeries. | |
large selection of Edmund Blunden's poems… | Edmund Blunden—Poems of Many Years. Collins 1957. | |
Collected Edition…of S.T. Coleridge | The Coleridge edition was completed by the publishers Routledge after RH-D's retirement. | |
my Newman | Newman: Prose and Poetry, selected by Geoffrey Tillotson, published by RH-D in 1957. 842 pages long. | |
Dickens Fellowship | Founded in 1902 to promote the works of Dickens and pursue the social reforms he championed. | |
Biography of William Wetmore Story | William Wetmore Story and his Friends (1903). | |
GWL | 10 January 1957 | |
Humpty D said | Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, Chapter VI, 'Humpty Dumpty': | |
Brigg umbrella | Brigg and Sons, established in 1836, merged in 1943 with a leather goods company to form Swaine Adeney Brigg of St James's Street. Along with Fox's in the City and James Smith and Sons of New Oxford Street, one of the most prestigious of umbrella-makers. | |
Poole trousering | Henry Poole, Savile Row tailor, established 1806. | |
Thomas footwear | Thomas of St James’s. Bootmaker to Prince Albert and other luminaries. | |
Not to Eden | Anthony Eden resigned as Prime Minister on 9 January. Churchill had earlier jokingly speculated that Eden might catch myxomatosis, the disease of rabbits, but there is no doubt that Eden's illness was genuine rather than diplomatic. (D R Thorpe, Alec Douglas-Home, 1967, p 186) | |
Mirror | The Daily Mirror. Popular, left-leaning daily newspaper. | |
New Statesman | Weekly political and literary magazine, of left-of-centre views. | |
T.L.S. | The Times Literary Supplement, a weekly literary review. It first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to The Times, and became a separate publication in 1914. | |
adolescent pretentiousness of Colin Wilson's | Wilson's The Outsider, published in 1956 when the author was 24. | |
Flora Finching | A character in Little Dorrit. | |
Leopards in the Night | See next note. | |
RH-D | 12 January 1957 | |
Leopards in the Night…The Trumpeting Herd | Published by RH-D, 1955 and 1957. The first is subtitled, 'Man-Eaters and Cattle Raiders in Nyasaland'. The author was a colonial official who, in the course of his duties, had perilous encounters with leopards, elephants and other wild animals. | |
Holker Hall | Large house, mostly Victorian, near Grange over Sands (now part of Cumbria: in 1957, in Lancashire). The Holker Cavendishes are a branch of the family of the Dukes of Devonshire. | |
Swedenborg Hall…Swedenborgians | The Swedenborg Society translates, prints and publishes works by the Swedish scientist, philosopher and visionary, Emanuel Swedenborg. It is based in Bloomsbury. | |
her Burne-Jones relations | Angela Thirkell's mother was the daughter of Edward Burne-Jones. | |
Bell's Life in London | Bell's Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, 'Combining, with the News of the Week, a rich Repository of Fashion, Wit, and Humour, and the interesting Incidents of REAL LIFE'. Merged with Sporting Life in 1886. Dickens's work appeared in the paper in the 1830s before being revised for hardback publication. | |
thirty-nine Muses… | The nine Muses, in Greek mythology, embodied and inspired the arts. The Thirty Nine Articles [of Religion] drawn up in 1563 are the standing orders of the Church of England. | |
GWL | 16 January 1957 | |
the Cockerell letters | The Best of Friends. Further Letters to Sydney Carlyle Cockerell. Edited by Viola Meynell and published by RH-D in 1956. | |
the Moore | Possibly GM—Memories of George Moore by Nancy Cunard, published by RH-D in 1956. The Moore letters to Lady Cunard were not published until later in 1957. | |
archtwerp | G A Nasser. | |
Bachelor of Powlgarh | usually 'of Powlagarh'. An exceptionally large tiger of the Kaladhungi forest in the 1920s. | |
'rolls darkling down the torrent of his fate' | Johnson, 'The Vanity of Human Wishes', lines 343-346: | |
Mrs Pat | Mrs Patrick Campbell. | |
on the mat for writing 'from whence' | Cardus tried to defend himself by pointing out to Scott that 'from whence' was used by respected writers including Fielding. Scott replied, 'Mr Fielding would not use it twice in my paper.' (Neville Cardus, Autobiography, Hamish Hamilton, 1984 (orig. Collins, 1947) pp 112-113.) | |
Ascham Society | Eton masters' literary society. | |
RH-D | 19 January 1957 | |
who was PM at the time of the Battle of Waterloo? | Lord Liverpool. | |
both Sunday papers | The Observer and The Sunday Times (there were other Sunday papers, but…) | |
Rossall | Public school at Fleetwood, Lancashire. | |
grizzly | A rare slip of RH-D's pen: he meant grisly. | |
The Battle of the River Plate | 1956 film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, depicting the Royal Navy's successful attack on the German battleship Graf Spee in the South Atlantic. | |
Lily Langtry | Usually written 'Lillie'. | |
GWL | 24 January 1957 | |
what is the collective noun? | According to Chambers' Dictionary it is a leap of leopards. The OED says 'Leap—An alleged name for a 'company' of leopards. Obs,' its only citation dating from 1486. | |
'fearful symmetry'…'deadly terrors' | Blake, 'The Tyger': | |
The Idea of a University | 1854 work, expounding Newman's views on the aim of education. | |
Lead Kindly Light | Hymn with words by Newman, music by John Bacchus Dykes. | |
Abide With Me | Hymn with words by Henry Francis Lyte, usually sung to the earlier melody 'Eventide' by William Henry Monk. | |
Fight the Good Fight | Hymn with words by John Monsell, sung to various tunes, including 'Duke Street' attributed to John Hatton, 'Pentecost' by William Boyd and the English traditional melody 'Shepton-Beauchamp'. | |
Marmion | Epic poem by Walter Scott about the Battle of Flodden, published in 1808. | |
Nightingale ode | The longest of Keats's odes, written in 1819. | |
Old Shaw and his alphabet | Shaw's will left the bulk of his estate for the reform of English spelling. The courts later directed that only £8,300 should be used for that purpose; an edition of Androcles and the Lion was printed in 1962 in the resulting phonetic alphabet of forty letters. | |
Majestic river Oxus | In Arnold's 'Sohrab and Rustum': | |
not at all a favourite author of Mrs Boffin's | Mrs Boffin: a kind, homely character in Dickens's Our Mutual Friend. Why she might be thought particularly hostile to the twentieth century works of Margaret Mead is not clear. | |
A Study of the Pelvic Type | A Study of Pelvic Type, and its Relationship to Body Build in White Women. By William Walter and Herbert Thoms with Ruth Christian Twaddle, Chicago, American Medical Association, 1939. | |
RH-D | 26 January 1957 | |
Byron! thou should'st be living at this hour | Parodying Wordsworth's 'London 1802': 'Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour'. | |
Bolton Evening News | Founded 1867, selling in Bolton, Bury, Leigh and elsewhere in Lancashire. Renamed The Bolton News in 2006. | |
GWL | 31 January 1957 | |
The Slave Girl |
| |
'He stumps along by your side…' | Justice Holmes in the Holmes-Laski Letters, 22 January 1922: 'He stumps along by your side, a bore in a brown coat, and suddenly he goes up and you find that your companion was an angel.' | |
his feelings at school about Lord Clare | Byron's Diary, 1821: | |
Fanny by Gaslight…Esther Waters | Sadleir's 1940 novel and Moore's of 1894 depict cads taking advantage of young women, with regrettable consequences. | |
RH-D | 3 February 1957 | |
Post…propter hoc | Post hoc ergo propter—'after this therefore because of this', a classic logical fallacy. | |
GWL | 7 February 1957 | |
thirty-two chewings of every mouthful | H C G Matthew, Gladstone: 1875-1898, p 304: 'Children learned…to emulate the great statesman by chewing each mouthful 32 times.' | |
to avert shock after a fall, one should remain some time in situ | I can find no citation for this. | |
Lives of the Poets | Johnson's Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets were first collected in 1781. More than fifty poets are included, not all of them of the highest rank. | |
The D.N.B.…the extreme dryness of the author's English | The DNB article on Admiral Hood was written in 1891 by J K Laughton. | |
GWL | 14 February 1957 | |
the place in the 'Milton' where the Doctor splits an infinitive? | Para 52: 'Milton was too busy to much miss his wife.' | |
Depend upon it, Sir… | Not, as far as I can find, a quotation; GWL in mock-Johnsonian vein, evidently. | |
Moujik | Russian peasant. | |
RH-D | 17 February 1957 | |
as at Tring | Champneys health farm at Tring was opened in 1925 by the naturopath Stanley Lief. | |
At the Drop of a Hat | Written and performed by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann. | |
imitation of a tennis-umpire at Wimbledon | 'Tried by the Centre Court', in which Flanders as 'the umpire upon whom the sun never sets', presiding over an interminable ladies' singles match, interspersed the umpire's announcements of the score with his private, exasperated thoughts: | |
GWL | 21 February 1957 | |
the Boniface of December | GWL's allusion is unclear. The OED cites the name of the jovial innkeeper in Farquhar's Beaux' Stratagem, 1707, 'whence taken as the generic proper name of innkeepers', but why this implies obesity is not apparent. | |
the tastes of Sir Gerald Kelly | GWL made innuendos about Kelly's moral outlook earlier (12 July 1956) and later (8 June 1957) in similarly cryptic manner. | |
Goldsmith's bow | Quotation not traced. | |
as Browning did the unseen | Browning: 'Epilogue' | |
'…abstract meditation…' | Some texts print this as 'abstracted meditation'. | |
RH-D | 24 February 1957 | |
ad misericordiam | To mercy or pity. | |
the new Michael Innes detective story | Appleby Plays Chicken. | |
Charles Morgan's novel | Challenge to Venus. | |
GWL | 28 February 1957 | |
quot medici tot sententiae | There are as many opinions as there are doctors. A play on Terence: Quot homines, tot sententiae. | |
Swithin Forsyte… | Galsworthy, Salvation of a Forsyte, Ch 1: | |
Emma…is very long | Emma and Mansfield Park are of almost identical length, with about 160,000 words apiece. | |
brilliant Don Leon poem of Colman's | Poem attributed variously to Byron or George Colman the younger (1762-1836). A hymn to homosexuality, ending with the lines: | |
'The moping idiot and the madman gay' | Crabbe: 'The Village'. | |
RH-D | 3 March 1957 | |
Distributism | Economic philosophy propounded by Chesterton, Belloc and others in pursuance of the principles of social justice articulated by the Roman Catholic Church. | |
GWL | 6 March 1957 | |
'somebody's not using Amplex' | Amplex: manufacturer of deodorants and breath-fresheners, whose advertising slogan was 'Someone isn't using Amplex'. | |
Ethel Colburn Mayne dismissed Don Leon as 'little filthy brochures' telling of 'things unspeakable in villainous Alexandrines | Mayne, Byron, Ch 16, but GWL misrepresents her: she was dismissing not Don Leon but scandalmongers at the time of the Byrons' separation: | |
They are not Alexandrines | An Alexandrine is a line of verse with twelve syllables (iambic hexameter). 'Don Leon' is in iambic pentameter, so has ten syllables to a line; however, (see previous note), Mayne was not referring to Don Leon when she talked of Alexandrines. | |
'Mid hush'd, cool rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed' | 'Ode to Psyche' | |
simply caviare | Hamlet 2:2: | |
RH-D | 17 March 1957 | |
'Youth and the sea! Glamour and the sea!' | Conrad, 'Youth'. | |
La Dame aux Camélias | By Alexandre Dumas fils, his own dramatisation of his novel of the same title. The year after the first production, Dumas' play became the basis for Verdi's La traviata. | |
Phèdre | Tragedy by Jean Racine. The Times commented: 'Mme Edwige Feuillère plays Phèdre with great restraint…It is a finely controlled study of character, persuasive in detail but not in total effect overwhelming.' | |
GWL | 20 March 1957 | |
G.B. | Governing board of a school. | |
Olympic Games | Competitors from the UK won six gold medals at the Melbourne Olympics. The fencing gold was won by Gillian Mary Sheen. | |
John Gilpin | Cowper, 'The Diverting History of John Gilpin' | |
Like the dog Rab ... | John Brown, Rab and His Friends: | |
Abinger Harvest | A collection of articles, essays, reviews, and poems, written over a period of thirty years by Forster. Published 1936. | |
Two Cheers for Democracy | Second collection of essays and articles by Forster, published in 1951. | |
Perhaps that’s what old age is, Swinny... | Frank Swinnerton, Background with Chorus, 1956, p. 152 | |
Rasselas | The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia: novella by Johnson. His only long work of fiction. | |
The Eye-witness | Collection of short stories by Belloc, divided into 'Historical Fiction', 'Fables and Fantasies' and 'Satire'. | |
Private Business | Variety of tutorial at Eton. | |
RH-D | 24 March 1957 | |
'the forest is like a harp' | Not traced, if, as RH-D supposed, it is a quotation. | |
GWL | 28 March 1957 | |
'No such almug-trees were seen in the land' | 1 Kings 10:12: | |
I am almost certain that…'The forest is like a harp' is in Shelley, but I cannot place it. | GWL may possibly have been thinking of 'Make my thy lyre, even as the forest is' in 'Ode to the West Wind'. | |
Irving playing a scene from The Bells | 'Mathias staggers through the curtain. His face is livid with terror ... waxen features drained of blood. His hands claw at his throat. A thin strangled voice forces its way through invisible constrictions. "Take the rope from my neck ... take the rope from my neck!" ... The pupils of the eyes roll upwards. The ghastly mask is petrified and tinted with the greyness of death. The limbs grow cold. As he falls, his wife catches him in her arms.' | |
News Chronicle | Daily newspaper, of liberal leaning, by this time in decline. Its sales suffered from its editorial opposition to the Suez campaign. In 1960 it was absorbed into the highly illiberal Daily Mail. | |
Illustrated London News | Magazine, founded 1842. Published weekly until 1971, and at longer intervals thereafter. | |
St John Ervine's Life of General Booth | God's Soldier: General William Booth (2 vols, Macmillan, 1934). | |
GWL | 4 April 1957 | |
Hugh Walpole's vis-à-vis Wodehouse apropos of Belloc's eulogy |